1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a magnetic tape library device. More specifically, the present invention relates to a magnetic tape library device which, among a plurality of cartridge housing bodies having a large number of magnetic tape cartridges housed therein and are placed in parallel within a horizontal plane, can easily pull out a cartridge housing body that is on a back side of the inserting/extracting direction to a prescribed position, and then pull it out to the outside the device.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a magnetic tape library device which includes: a cartridge housing body for housing a plurality of magnetic tape cartridges; a magnetic tape drive which loads one of the magnetic tape cartridges taken out from the cartridge housing body to read/write data; and an accessor mechanism which mutually moves the magnetic tape cartridge between the cartridge housing body and the magnetic tape drive (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication 2003-196901 (Patent Document 1), for example).
However, with the magnetic tape library device disclosed in this Patent Publication, the packaging density of the magnetic tape cartridges cannot be increased sufficiently considering the fact that the device becomes large-scaled.
In the meantime, there has been known a magnetic tape library device in which a cartridge housing body is placed slidably within a horizontal plane along the inserting/extracting direction. For such device, there are a type in which the cartridge housing body in a single piece is placed slidably along the inserting/extracting direction, and a type in which the cartridge housing body is divided in two pieces in the back and the front (longitudinally).
However, there are following issues pointed out with the magnetic tape library device in which the cartridge housing body is slidably placed within the horizontal plane.
That is, for increasing the packaging density of the magnetic tape cartridges with the type having the single-piece cartridge housing body, the weight as a whole becomes increased. This makes it difficult to pull out and extract the cartridge housing body from the device or to mount it again. Further, since the cartridge housing body becomes heavy, it is necessary to increase the strength of a support member for supporting the cartridge housing body. Therefore, the device as a whole becomes large-scaled, and the weight becomes heavier.
With the type in which the cartridge housing body is divided into two pieces in the back and front, the cartridge housing body on the front side is slidable while the cartridge housing body on the back side is fixed. Thus, a robot or the like is used for exchanging the magnetic tape cartridges placed inside the cartridge housing body on the back side. However, before reaching the back-side cartridge housing body, there is a space where the front-side cartridge housing body is placed. Therefore, it is necessary to operate the robot or the like within that space for exchanging the magnetic tape cartridges. As a result, the structure of the robot or the like becomes complicated, and the cost therefore is increased.